


An Outstretched Hand

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Book: The Magician's Nephew, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 00:14:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12047286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: The giants came in the summer of the seventh year, in the long golden days between planting and harvest, when the people of Narnia worked to lay the bones of their new land: roads and wells, fords and harbors, and towers along the borders for they knew that an Evil walked abroad and their protection would not last forever.





	An Outstretched Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redsnake05](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsnake05/gifts).



The giants came in the summer of the seventh year, in the long golden days between planting and harvest, when the people of Narnia worked to lay the bones of their new land: roads and wells, fords and harbors, and towers along the borders for they knew that an Evil walked abroad and their protection would not last forever.

King Frank was working on the foundation of one such tower, on the banks of the Shribble just upriver from the great marshes, when a Crow arrived with the tidings.

"Something new! Something new!" shouted the Crow, whose name was Glitterchance, as she glided down in a tight spiral to land on a block of half-dressed stone. "King Frank, there's something new in the north!"

The entire work crew paused and turned to her with eager eyes and ears.

Frank wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm (smearing himself with stone dust in the process) and bowed his head to the Crow. "Something new, you say? I know I'm all ears. What did you spy beyond our borders?" 

"Strangers who look like humans, but taller than Elephants! Twice as tall!" Glitterchance said. "I saw two score crossing the moors, walking south along the banks of the Nettlebane. If they keep the same pace they'll reach the marshes tomorrow at noon. Who are they? What shall we do?"

"In England, we called such people giants," Frank said after a moment of blank surprise. (He decided not to mention that in England giants were mere myths. He and Helen had found that allowing their subjects to consider England a magical land saved endless confusion, and also amused Fledge.) "But p'raps these folk name themselves something else. We should ask them tomorrow."

"We go to the marshes, then?" asked Narvik, the Black Dwarf head of the work crew. Her fingers danced fretfully along the handle of her maul and the beads in her beard as she spoke.

"Yes," said Frank. "But first, someone send word to Joyous Gard. I want Helen and Fledge with us when we greet these strangers."

He also wanted his sword. But Helen would understand that without instructions, and he had no wish to drive caution and fear into his people where it might serve only to spoil the chance at friendship with the first new people they had found since the morning of the world.

Narvik nodded. The she slung her maul over her shoulder and shouted, "You heard the king! Pack up, people. We have ten miles to cover and only two half-days to do it. Move!"

Frank watched his people mill about in orderly chaos and hoped desperately that this was not the first strike of the Witch's evil against Narnia. He had promised Aslan to defend this land and these people if war should come (as it must, for even in this world, even in strange shapes, people were people and what one wanted was not always for the good of all), but he had never been to war, never been a soldier. What he knew about battles could fill a thimble with space to spare.

And giants! Forty giants! What was any man to do against people who could squash him like an ant?

Extend his hand in peace and hope they might be friends, he supposed, and if that failed, buy time. Frank sighed. Then he mopped his face again and went to help dismantle the tents. They had a long march ahead of them this afternoon, and all hands were needed to speed the work.

He smiled to keep up spirits, and yearned for the morning when Helen and Fledge would stand steady at his shoulders.

\---------------

Queen Helen was weeding the onion patch in the gardens at Joyous Gard (which still felt a presumptuous name for a castle, but less so than Camelot or Windsor) when Glitterchance arrived with the tidings.

"Giants! Two score giants in the north, in the moors!" the Crow called as she spiraled down to perch on a raspberry trellis. "They're heading down the Nettlebane to the Shribble, Queen Helen. They should reach the confluence by noon tomorrow. King Frank is moving to meet them and wants you and Fledge to come."

Helen stood and peeled off her dirt-stained gloves. "We will. Did he say anything else?"

Glitterchance resettled her feathers and cocked her head to peer at Helen from one bright black eye. "No. Should he have?"

Helen smiled and shrugged. "He might have sent his love," she said. What she didn't say was that he hadn't sent a warning, beyond the simple fact of strangers (giants! this world had giants!) approaching the border, which meant this might not be an invasion, might not come to war.

"Fledge should be in the meadow beside the river, discussing dredging with a crew of Otters and Beavers," Helen continued. "By the time you find him, I will be ready to fly."

Glitterchance bobbed her head and launched once more into the air. Helen watched her wing eastward, a tiny shard of shadow against the bright afternoon sky. Then she sighed, and pulled off her straw hat, and went to fetch her husband's sword and her own quarterstaff. They were neither of them well-trained in violence, but they had fumbled their way toward a rough semblance of skill over the past years, bashing at each other (and what few of their people showed an interest) in the name of what-if and god-forbid.

With luck, they would never have to put those half-guessed patterns to the test.

Helen's brother had gone for a sailor, and her uncle for a soldier. Neither had ever come home. She hoped with all her heart that her bright and beautiful new world might be spared such sorrows. Better far to make a friend than fight a foe.

But if these giants met outstretched hands with fists, she would meet the test as best she might, with Frank and Fledge beside her.

\---------------

Fledge was drinking from the Glasswater, soothing his throat after long hours of negotiating between Beavers, Otters, and the naiads of the river (he should never have agreed to be seneschal, no matter how earnestly his two humans had asked), when Glitterchance the Crow arrived with the tidings.

"Fledge, Fledge, Fledge!" she called as she spiraled down to perch on his shoulder. "Forty giants are walking south to the Shribble, and King Frank wants you to bring Queen Helen to meet him at the confluence with the Nettlebane by morning."

"Giants!" said Fledge, all the feathers in his wings fluffing out in alarm. "Nobody told me this world had giants."

"I think they're new," said Glitterchance. She stretched out her neck and preened one of his feathers back into order. "I think the King and Queen are worried, but they didn't say anything. Should we be worried? Do you think the giants might be part of the Evil, trying to slip past the Tree?"

Fledge blew through his nostrils and tapped his left hind hoof against the soft soil of the riverbank. He remembered far less about England than Helen or Frank, faded impressions filtered through the limited scope of a dumb beast's mind, but he remembered enough to know that strangers on the borders might be a sign of war.

War ate horses. War ate men. War ripped up field and forest, leaving mud and wreckage in place of good grass and trees.

But Narnia was not England, and even in England some strangers became friends.

It was much easier to make friends if you didn't start out scared and angry. If Helen and Frank wanted to avoid panic, he would follow their lead.

"I think we should be careful," he said. "The future is big and holds all kinds of things, and not all of them can be good. But not all of them are bad, either! I trust Frank and Helen to judge which these giants are, and whatever comes, we'll all face it together in Aslan's name."

"That makes sense," Glitterchance agreed. "Is it all right if I tell everyone what you said?"

"Yes," said Fledge. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a queen to collect and a long flight to make."

He shivered his skin, making Glitterchance croak and hop in protest before she launched herself aloft. In a moment, he followed her into the air (and that never grew old, the coil and the spring and the breathless moment when his wings strained and caught the wind and sent him racing joyfully on the invisible rivers of the sky) and beat his way west toward the slowly growing towers and walls of Joyous Gard where Helen waited with clothes and tea and her husband's yet-unblooded sword.

\---------------

When the giants reached the Shribble shortly after noon, they found three score Narnians arrayed on the opposite shore, a handful of bows and hammers and swords near to hand but not drawn in threat.

"Hail and well met!" Frank called across the slowly moving water. "When you reached the base of the moors, you entered the kingdom of Narnia. I am King Frank, and these are my wife, Queen Helen, and our seneschal, Fledge. Do you come in peace?"

The giants paused, and exchanged a hasty muddle of glances and gestures, tucking a handful of smaller figures (only twice the size of a human) into the middle of a rough defensive circle. Eventually an older woman with a scarred cheek and a crown of reddish plaits tugged her leather tunic and trousers into better order, stepped forward, and leaned her weight on a club that seemed to be made from a whole oak's trunk.

"Hail and well met, Narnians. I am Gurliath, wayfinder of the Seven Thunders clan. We are traveling south in search of warmer winters and a place beyond the shadow of the Ice Queen's tower," she said in a booming voice. "We did not know anyone else had come to this world, and we will raise no hand to you unless you raise yours first to us."

"Do we trust them?" Frank said under his breath to Helen at his right hand and Fledge at his left.

"They're _awfully_ large," Fledge said doubtfully. "But that Ice Queen they're running away from -- do you think that could be the Witch? I wouldn't want to make anyone stay where she could get them."

"Perhaps she is," said Helen. "But I don't think it matters. Did you see? Those smaller ones -- they're _children_. No one brings children to a war. And we can't turn children away to whatever winters are like on the moors."

"Then we let them in," said Frank, and raising his voice once more, he called, "Then be welcome in our land, Gurliath of the Seven Thunders clan. Narnia claims you as kin."

Across the river, Gurliath smiled.

As the giants began to ford the marshy confluence of the Nettlebane and Shribble, Glitterchance spiraled up to carry the news once more.


End file.
